Roger Aylworth: Adjusting to a technological mid-life crisis

It is a sad to admit, but I am finding myself in the geographical center of a midlife crisis.

In my case it might be more realistic to call it a late-middle or even an early-late life crisis, but regardless of the proper time frame or the verbiage, the point is my world has suddenly done a double backflip in the pike position.

I suppose I should point out that my problem has nothing to do with red sports cars or 20-something secretaries. I have never been a great fan of sports cars — red or any other color — and since I met my dear bride, the saintly Susan, about 45 years ago, other women, except as friends, have no appeal to me whatsoever.

My midlife craziness has nothing to do with means of transportation or other human beings.

My nemesis is a computer system.

For the better part of a decade my newsroom has depended on an admittedly slow and indisputably undependable computer system. The computers and the software it supported had little if anything to recommend them except for one thing — everybody in the newsroom understood them and had learned their idiosyncrasies and could make them work after a fashion.

Then after months of effort on his part, my boss arranged to get us all new computers and an entirely new production system for both the writing of the news and the editing and page design of the whole entire newspaper.

There is absolutely nothing about the new system that is similar to the old one except they both have keyboards and computer screens.

All of us have had training. All of the trainers are nice, friendly people who understand everything about what we all desperately need to learn. In its own way, their expertise is my problem.

They understand all of the strangeness of this system down to its deepest little chips. They know it so well that every aspect of the electronic beast seems reasonable and "user friendly."

I suspect the function of the computers and the programs are in fact easy and even user friendly when one thoroughly comprehends them, but I also believe the mechanical magic that makes the internal combustion engine in my beloved truck go varoom-varoom-pow is comprehensible to a trained technician.

When the devices arrived, the prospect of sitting down and working at my new desk station filled me with the kind of terror I always experience just before the starting gun goes off at the at the beginning of a half-marathon. I've run a few of these monsters and when the gun goes off, I know I am going to finish, but I also know there will be pain. I am not a fan of pain.

I guess that is why this is a crisis. I have already learned some rudimentary elements in using the system and there is every reason to believe I will master the challenge, but it has pushed me about eight light years out of my comfort zone.

I am sure I will get it all down pat, maybe even before I retire.

Roger H. Aylworth is a staff writer with the Enterprise-Record. His column appears every Sunday and he can be reached at raylworth@chicoer.com.